Support for 3Delight - Is it Fading? . . . and why?
GeoffreyHawkins
Posts: 255
I realize I'm likely swimming upstream on this but, here goes . . .
I've returned to DAZ after a six year hiatus. Spent a small fortune the last few months catching up on a significant amount of product. But I have to admit I'm struggling with the whole Iray transition.
I like 3Delight. It suits the type of projects I'm involved in. It's generally fast and efficient and keeps my productivity where I need it to be. And it works well on my not quite state of the art PC.
Iray - It's slow and clunky (at least on my PC which I realize is a subjective assessment) and the renders I've done took way too long. Yes, the results can be stunning, but for the work I do, I do not need high end photorealistic renders, especially at the expense of my productivity. And again, from my very subjective viewpoint, I find the Iray learning curve difficult and not very intuitive and user friendly.
I'm happy staying with 3Delight. The vast majority of products in the DAZ store still support it. However, I'm bumping into more and more PAs who are apparently abandoning 3Delight completely. It's a shame because I would purchase many of their products if they had the dual support. Many, many PAs and DAZ itself still produce items in both formats and they have benefited from my business and I have benefited from their excellent efforts.
So, is the return on investment becoming so poor as to dissuade PAs from supporting 3Delight? (It's hard to imagine that's the case with so many PAs still supporting 3Delight.) Or is it a deliberate effort to push people over to Iray? I have little doubt that I will ultimately adapt to Iray either out of necessity or via a new upgraded PC that will hopefully shorten render times and keep my productivity in line. But in the meantime, my $$$ are going to those products that support both 3Delight and Iray. It's a win-win for me; I'll have 3Delight now and the potential for Iray later. Iray-only products? I might buy them some time in the future (likely for much less), or not at all.
Thoughts? Advice?
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Comments
To be honest, I've never gotten into 3Delight. I started working in 3D less than two years ago and after working with Iray the whole time I found it very strange and uncomfortable to use 3Delight. I suppose those who have always worked in 3Delight might feel the same about Iray. But I do think that 3Delight is probably going to be left behind eventually - as technology changes. And I imagine that eventually whatever big advancement comes next will probably knock Iray out, and then Iray will eventually be left behind too. It's the way of technology. We change with it or we get left behind. :)
Many of the ones that have stopped supporting 3Delight have said the sales need to be higher to offset the time it takes to make two sets of materials and fully test them. Other PAs didn't start making content until after Iray and have never included 3Delight support.
Iray is in much more in demand than 3Delight, and PAs have said supporting both nearly doubles the time it takes to make a product. You can find a lot of Genesis 3 items that have 3Delight shaders, but since the releaase of Genesis 8, there have been a lot fewer products that support 3Delight. Thjere is a script that converts Iray shaders to 3Delight, but I don't have the link to it. Maybe someone else will post it.
I am in a similar position to you, prefering 3Delight for a variety of reasons. I guess it's a good thing I decided that Genesis 3 is my last DAZ generation. I kept buying into each new generation since Vicky 2, but decided it's got to stop.
Hello. Welcome back! I too, am returning after a bit of a hiatus. Most of the "only Iray" content I have seen has been to make Iray easier for people to use. Most content can be rendered in either one, but you may have to adjust settings maually. Which products were you referring? Maybe someone can point you to something comparable.
I still see it often enough in the DAZ Gallery. I also use pwToon from time to time which is a 3DL subset. So it's still supported by DAZ Studio but I think it's mostly there for backwards and legacy compatibility.
There are many renderers out there, both biased and unbiased. the majoirty of users outside of the DS/poser community of which there are many don't have the luxury of point and click products where everything is done for you like we have for poser and DS. Which is why it drives me nuts when people that use DS seem to have this notion that if something doesn't come with either an Iray or 3delight shader, it can't be used, or they refuse to purchase an addon because it uses a different shader other than what they prefer. It's called being creative for a reason and if you haven't done it, it's probably time to click on the Surfacing/rendering tab and learn about the basics of textures, shaders and materials. If DS and poser vanished tomorrow, 90% of users here would be lost, when the reality is there are many more ways and apps that can be used to create 3D art
I prefer unbiased rendering and had to tweak nearly every surface of every addon in my scene when i used to use Reality/Lux and Maxwell before switching to Iray only (the interactive preview saves me a ton of time). More than half the content I use in DS doesn't come with an Iray shader and it's not rocket science in most cases to get a decent looking iray shader working for it in a short amount of time (skin being the exception). There are even a ton of commercial and free shaders and addons that can be used also to save you from dong it yourself. So you really have no excuse unless you just want to complain.
As time goes on, the support for 3delight will probably be less and less. PAs that started with Iray will probably have a hard time making the product look the same in quality in both renderers and the amount of work to do so and still get a return on time invested probably won't be worth it in the long run for most. I also have no idea if Daz prefers PAs to focus on one or the other. Best to use what you want to use and find a way to make non native items for for you.
I purchased the Dragonsbane Barbarian Bundle, not realizing it didn't support 3Delight. Interestingly, the add-on Dragonsbane Barbarian Clothing Textures by a different PA offered 3Delight support. I really like Luthbel's products but the newer ones are Iray only.
I had Sloshworks Private Eye Bundle in my cart until I realized it was Iray only. My projects are very retro/historical and this product would have been good fit.
My concern with Iray is that I've heard people say that long render times (hours not minutes) is pretty much the rule and not the exception. Is this really the case? That's my primary issue with Iray. I do not have time to wait for renders that take that much time when the difference in quality is negligible, at least for my purposes.
Honestly, especially if hair featured in the picture, I could often find 3Delight renders took ages, too.
Would have used it more in the past (and now), but could never find any easy-to-understand guides in layman's terms for how to use the whole 'uber' array of products.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/139326/irayto3delight-conversion-script#latest
Here is that previously mentioned Iray to 3Delight script discussion.
The nuts and bolts of surface shaders is not a part of my creative process at the moment. It doesn't need to be for the projects I'm working on. DS is here now and it is providing me with the tools and resources I need. Point and click products help me work quickly and productively and if I achieve the results I desire, I do not believe my creative process is compromised.
Not complaining. Just simply asking for insight and advice since I've been out of the fold for so long.
The items in Dragonsbane can be rendered in 3Delight. They are just clothing and props for Genesis 3 figure.You may have to tweak the surface settings and the rendering settings to achieve the desired outcome, but completely possible. What do you mean, "it didn't support 3Delight"? Were there no rendering settings included? Many products don't include ANY rendering presets. Those that do are just trying to help the customer achieve good results using their product, but they can be rendered in both, I promise!
A new product to be released promises to get rid of the problems of transmapped hair and long renders in 3Delight., among other things and also will aid Iray users. I can't wait for it! Animation is much easier to do in 3Delight (motion blur already works - yet to be released in Iray), less of a problem with memory that you have with Iray, displacement is better in 3Delight, etc. You can make renders look real as in Iray... you just need better light, use gamma 2.2 and use better materials/shaders and you can do it in reasonable amounts of time. Check this out! https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/215066/ibl-master-image-based-lighting-control-for-both-renderers-a-new-ibl-for-3delight-commercial/p1
I see what you're saying. I guess what I'm looking for are the 3Delight presets to make it a quick and easy process. A lot of this is by no means second nature to me as yet.
You can always chose a render preset you liked from another set. Perhaps, that will help? Let me know how it goes! And...Good luck!
...the issue with 3DL and IRay it is easier to convert 3DL materials to Iray (there is a base set of "Uber" Iray shaders and a lot of Iray shader sets, a number of them PC priced) than it is to convert Iray to 3DL (Wilbear has a script for Iray to 3DL but it still requries a fair amount of manual adjustment to get things looking just right afterwards).
The other issue is like you say very slow render speeds unless you have a high memory Nvidia GPU (AMD GPUs wont work as they use OpenCL and Iray is CUDA based). I also have an older system which I am in the process of upgrading but for the most part will be doing CPU based rendering as my scenes tend to be on the big and busy side (larger than 4 GB) and my postwork skills are not the greatest due to the fact I don't have a steady hand anymore.
What I liked about 3DL is there are a lot of "in render" utilities for different effects and styles which to create using Iray requires it to be done in post. As someone who was heavily into traditional art media I tend to prefer the more illustrative or "painterly" quality that one can get with 3DL in the render pass. I rarely even use UE as it is a memory hog and render times are similar to those when rednering in CPU with Iray.
Oh Iray is great for pushing the realism envelope (interesting to see my characters in a more "photo like" quality) and as I also did photography I came in with a little bit of a leg up on it (same with Lux but that engine is geologically slow in CPU mode even compared to Iray and Reality 4 was just to buggy for me). I still remember and am a veteran of the old "Realistic Renders" thread of years ago where we pushed the limits of 3DL far as we could to wring the most realisim out of it as possible.
Over the various iterations of Daz Studio, 3DL performance was improved and working with AoA's adanced lights and a few "photographer's tricks" I could get pretty close to realistic looking images. After Iray came out I did a side by side comparison of the same exact scene (optimised for each engine) and the 3DL scene finished in under 15 minutes while the Iray one took over 2 hours. While Iray made some things easier like using mesh lights, creating realistic shadows, and better reflective surfaces, I still feel the 3DL version was overall better as the textures in the Iray one all looked flat in comparison even with all the surfaces converted (to get proper bump and normals I would have needed to create my own maps and do a lot of experimentation with the settings). Now to be fair, this was the 4.8 beta where Iray was first introduced, so all we had were the base Uber Iray and Iray G2 skin shader sets at the time. Meanwhile by that time 3DL was pretty refined and that is the engine we were most experienced with (I am currently redoing the Iray test image now that there are more tools and shader utilities for it as well as having more experience in working with it).
I think it will continue to fade away. As mentioned, the newer artists with no experience with 3DL don't have much incentive to pick it up.
It's mostly due to advancing hardware. PBRs are here to stay, the computing power is enough for even real time games. And staying within PBR's using standard material properties, it's easier to migrate materials from one engine to another. I have no experience with 3DL, but if it's like Firefly, there were all kinds of tricks to get more realistic results, including lighting hacks to fix the renderer quirks (like glowing corners).
Hi and welcome back! I'm using 3DL for everything I do, I think most people especially PA's don't realise the true potential of this render engine, it's capable of doing amazing things. The lack of documentation doesn't make the situation any better. But there are quite a few 3DL enthusiasts around it seems, and there are some vendors now who make really useful products for 3DL, like Marshian, Parris and others.
I think DAZ could really help new users by releasing some simple step by step tutorials for both render engines. I see the same questions over and over again: Why are my renders so dark, why are they so grainy, how can I improve my render quality and so on and so on. There has to be a reason for people being totally lost, no?
I've chosen not to support PA's that make IRay only products. I don't need them, I have a fairly large content library by now and I'm not seeing very many new unique products being released at the moment (my very personal opinion), so not interested in spending my money on things that will take a lot of tweaking to make work. I leave that to others that may find it exciting.
It's hard to give good advice. As has been said, IRay is the big thing right now so if you want all the new stuff and can afford the latest GPU's then go for it, if you're happy with 3DL and it gets the job done then stick with that. I have a feeling (been wrong before) that there are some people working on new 3DL shaders right now that will blow our minds...
I'm working on a set right now - doing iray first as that's what I'm using more of these days. It's by no means a huge set, but even so, it's a lot of work getting the iray materials right. I'm planning on providing 3DL mats too, but it'll depend on how much work it ends up being and whether I can get results I'm happy with. (I'll look for 3DL beta testers to help offer advice on what I'm doing wrong ;) )
If you look at the 3DL lab thread, you'll note that a lot of the hardcore 3DL stuff end up recoding shaders, and lights, and so on to make 3DL work well.
The VAST majority of users don't want to do that, and so they run into various issues with 3DL.
I enjoy 3DL, and still use it from time to time. But I often run into issues that are annoying to try to solve, if I'm even up to solving them. As a PA, it's not worth spending much time to get 3DL surfaces right, and it requires a familiarity and skill that many PAs either are losing or never had.
I provided 3DL materials with Will's Wyrms, but in future products if I ever encounter problems with trying to accomplish something with a texture in 3DL, I'm very likely to just decide not to provide 3DL options.
By the way, the Iray conversion thread is thanks to Esemwy, I just did some testing.
...ah, been a while since I was involved in that discussion.
Unfortunately I am not a hardcore coder but still like the way 3DL handles and renders quickly without having to drop 600$ - 800$ on a GPU card with enough memory (and still possibly have the render process dump to the CPU).
I know what 80% intensity of a light will look like in 3DL. With Iray I'm always guessing if 15,000, 150,000 or 1,500,000 lumens is enough to light my scene. With 3DL I can create various styles and effects within the render pass. With Iray I have to resort to more postwork (which I am very bad at) to get the same look and quality I'm after.
As the OP mentioned, it is also a production matter. If I can get say three scenes rendered in the time it takes to render one in Iray, I get more satisfaction out of what I am doing. In the 3DL days my output was fairly prolific and I didn't simply dump characters, props, sets into the viewport and hit "render" either. With Iray I am becoming more and more frustrated and discouraged with the long render times especially having to run render tests while setting up a new scene (again part of why I dumped Lux as that seemed to render on a geologic time scale).
I don't feel you have to get into the hardcore stuff to make good 3DL renders but on the other hand there is a market there for the brave one who has the skills to write some custom shaders and make a nice package with presets that everybody can use. I found some nice stuff in the lab thread today thanks to Takeo.Kensei
He made me realise I really know so little about 3DL. It's like dark matter to me but I'll start exploring that stuff now.
I can see your point but I've seen some stunning renders you did with 3DL so I know you know a lot more than you want to admit
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I find myself torn.
On the one hand, Iray renders faster for me. And I need to use fewer lights to get the right effect. And I've learned what settings I need to tweak for more vibrant colors.
On the other hand, that comes at the expense of not being able to multitask - despite the memory usage being within the capablilites of my video card. And I have to do more postwork if I want to do special effects. And I tend to need to do more test renders to get the lighting right, because even now I don't "get" Iray lights the way I do 3DL lights, let alone getting the exposure value at the right setting. Not to mention the lights have to be off camera or they show. I have pwEffect and pwGhost and pwSurface 2, all of which give me some nice options for 3DL that either aren't options in Iray (or require specalized maps) or that would require a lot of trial and error to get looking right in Iray when it's already set up correctly for 3DL.
However, I did start this back in the days when even products here at Daz didn't have decent DS settings, and plenty of products were poser only - that I still managed to make work as DS added LIE and other tricks that Poser Primary PA's never realized were there. They may be rusty, but I still have those skills. So when I do make a 3DL render, I can change things. It just takes time.
I've resigned myself to the day when 3DL mats are once again a rarity, and while I very much appreciate it when Vendors do include both, I don't blame them (any more) when they don't.
...the difference between the old days and now is the Poser materials used the same surface channels that Daz did so often it required only afew simple adjustments (in particular turning off ambience which in Poser was on by default, and removing reflection maps) and materials would look pretty good. With Iray it is a totally different ballgame as some Iray channels do not translate over to 3DL very well, or at all. This is why it is so much more difficult to convert Iray materials for use in 3DL.
I certainly don't look forward to the day when Iray is the only render engine available. I don't have the resources to purchase a high memory GPU card like a 1080 Ti or whatever it's Volta successor will be and most definitely cannot afford a Quadro. I'd like to say I'd' move over to Carrara, but Iray materials are even more of a pain to convert for that programme.
Pretty well sums up my experience/situation too. I had switched to Octane for almost everything before DAZ integrated Iray into DS, because set up was so much easier and more efficient.
3DL is a great render engine, but it requires a lot more work, especially for those who typically don't use everything "straight out of the box" (and a lot of the advanced features aren't easily accessible in DS.
You really don't need to spend an arm and a leg to be able to render in Iray, IMO. I think the NVidia GeForce card I use is less than $200.
for the OP a tip, as you have those sets that are iray only materials ( for one DAZ has a very comfortable 30 days return policy for products you don't really need) the other thing I can advise for those who don't want to get into the details of shader mechanics, is to buy a nice pack of quality 3DL shaders and apply those to the props you have
eg look at these: https://www.daz3d.com/dg-shader-essentials
https://www.daz3d.com/dg-shader-essentials-2
https://www.daz3d.com/lumina-materials-library
https://www.daz3d.com/metalized-glass-shaders-for-daz-studio
just to name a few
I think render times in 3delight are much longer, when you want it to look really good. There are quick solutions, that won't look any better than the old Poser4 renders. You could use uber environment and uber lights, that give stunning 3dlight renders, but your render times go through the ceiling. In the end Iray is just faster. I also like it to think of it like looking through a real world camera. Iray was my entry into DS and I will never ever use 3dlight again.
...my scenes would challenge a 1070/1080 let alone a 1050Ti or even a 1060 6GB.
...I've been working with Daz since 1.7, back when there was no "Uber" anything. To get the look of fill, AO, and bounce lighting you had to "cheat" a bit. Something I learned back in my theatrical lighting days. True, it often meant adding more lights in addition to the primary ones for the scene but it worked. I rarely used UE because at the time I was still working on a 32 bit notebook and just thinking about it would make the programme crash. Even after building my 64 bit monster (well it was 5 years ago), I rarely used it because it still meant hours long render times. The real breakthrough for me were AoA's SSS Shaders and Advanced Lights. I could actually now get decent looking skin as along with lighting that was more believable as well as efficient (with the Ambient light I no longer needed to build arrays of low intensity distant lights) without the long render times of UE. I would even substitute the AoA lights for the UE components in skydome/light sets).
Again, keep in mind that I come from a traditional media background (drawing and painting) so photoreal rendering is not so much the "holy grail" for me. I actually prefer a more "illustrative" or "painterly" look as that is what I had worked with pretty much all my life. I believe I have achieved some pretty darn good results with that "old clunker" of a render engine and those "old fashioned" lights over the years that go far beyond the "Poser4" look.